Neighborhoods and Nations: Revealing Inequality in the Promised Land

June 17, 2014

I had the honor of being featured on the Neighborhoods and Nations blog this week. The post is an interview with me about my book “Inequality in the Promised Land” and my other research threads. I think it does a good job of providing some insight into how I’m thinking, what the book brings, and some of the terrain we have to consider in the post Civil-Rights era. Please give it a read and share. The book is officially available for purchase on Stanford University Press (Use discount code: S1420C) and Amazon. Also, don’t forget to like the book’s Facebook page and join the discussion.

Photo courtesy of Brett Levin

R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy is a professor of sociology at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. This month, his book Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling is being released through Stanford University Press. In this interview with Neighborhoods and Nations, he gives an overview of the research underlying the book’s insights on the everyday, and often insidious, forms of discrimination black students and their families face in schools across America. In doing so, Professor Lewis-McCoy paints a portrait of a new suburban landscape, one that fails to be “the promised land” of broader opportunities and resources that struggling families, particularly people of color, can rely on in equal shares.

How would you contextualize this work in relation to your past and ongoing research? Would you say that ‘race and education’ is a primary focus for you as a sociologist?

My research for Inequality in the Promised Land continues my ongoing interest in how race and class shape educational opportunity. This year marks 60 years since the US Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate facilities are inherently unequal facilities.” When most people think of schools they think of them as the engine of social change or potentially the “great equalizer.” Unfortunately, when we look deeper, we see that schools are a mixed bag—some schools are flying high, while others are failing.